K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences

If you want something done right

I know this probably isn’t a fair thing to say, and gripes like this are always shallow and pointless. But I reinstalled Arch last night because I needed access to a program or two that I couldn’t build myself … and because I am waiting on a patch for the Nvidia driver so it will work with the 2.6.26 kernel (I have to feed my Gridwars 2 addiction).

Long story short … mplayer wouldn’t work (it was corrected this morning, so that’s not so much of an issue any more), so I couldn’t distract myself while converting some files. Sylpheed is a month overdue for the jump to 2.5.0, which is an egregious delay for a “cutting edge” distro. And startup now takes almost 12 seconds for the udev sequence alone (27 seconds total), which is almost as long as my Crux system takes, Grub to X.

All of those things are fixable on my end. I could guide pacbuilder to a happy ending, or rebuild Sylpheed with the newer version, and maybe even hotwire udev again, or build a custom kernel.

But I didn’t. Why? Well, for one thing, after I finish with the software I need, I don’t plan on using Arch any more. I’ll rebuild my Crux system and compile it fresh. If I was dedicated to the idea of a full Arch installation, I’d probably spend more time with it, but this is admittedly temporary.

And it’s funny, but I’ve started to think of Arch in the same way I think of Ubuntu — it’s a precompiled distro, which makes it fast to install and easy to manage (more so than Ubuntu, too). But recompiling in Arch, like Ubuntu, seems like a waste of time to me any more. If I’m going to recompile stuff (new or free-floating software from AUR aside), why use Arch at all?

Anyway, I never thought I’d say it, but I was disappointed with the experience. It was fast and easy to put together, but I’m headed back to Crux, where — strangely enough — I feel more at home now.